I don’t remember a single thing after I passed out. Sandra told me Headquarters sent out an immediate care unit that did their best to patch me up. Still, it wasn’t good enough to do the trick. In the end, they injected me with some of Headquarters’ good stuff. It’s a rare, specialized healing contraption. The shit restructures your body and fixes any and all injuries. Well, almost. The bad part? It renders you comatose and delirious. Looking back, though, I wouldn’t have minded a nightmare or two, but what happened was far, far worse.

That orb I’d touched fucked with my mind. Sandra told me what we fought that day was a manipulator, or an extension of it. Manipulators are rare, extremely rare. They are organisms which still linger in their own reality, but have the powers to push through and create proxy organisms. That cat-thing we fought was nothing but a puppet and the damned orb was the tool the creature used to channel its powers. When I touched it, the stupid idiot I am, a connection was established, allowing the manipulator to plunge right into my mind. While Sandra was busy running all sorts of scans on those cryptic writings, the rising number of incidents and the involvement of a manipulator of all things, I was trapped in my very own personal hell.

Describing dreams is tough. They have no structure and there’s no going from point A to B, no transition, so to say. Instead, it’s like skipping through a movie, or skipping through various, unrelated movies.

The first thing I remember was a little girl. She was sitting on the floor with her back to me and was crying. As I approached her, she was mumbling to herself, repeating something.

“... did you...” was all I heard at first.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” I heard my dream-self ask as I got closer.

I knew this little girl. It wasn’t how she looked or the sound of her voice, it was a feeling, knowledge. The moment I reached out to touch her, she jerked around. Her body was a tethered, bloodied mess. She had no mouth, no face, just a gaping abyss that screamed at me.

“Why did you kill me!?”

I cringed back and found myself at the daycare I’d been to two years ago. That little girl was the one that had been infested by the parasite. When I realized it, her body burst apart and a mess of tendons spread out towards me.

In a panicked state, I rushed away, but was suddenly in a different place. It was nothing but a barren wasteland. Nothing was there, yet I was walking. How long I’d been walking or where I was going, I couldn’t tell. My mind was slow and drowsy. Yet I had the distinct feeling that something was surrounding me, pushing against me and my entire being. It almost felt as if something was trying to invade my thoughts, my mind. I heard sounds, words, but they weren’t in any language I could hope to understand. It was nothing but gibberish. Yet, I felt it grow louder, angrier and with each new word, with each sound, it was stabbing at my mind.

I found myself in a building. The surrounding walls were shifting, melting, and running into one another. At the same time, however, they were solid. It felt as if dreams were overlapping, fusing together, and then fizzling apart again. I had the predominant feeling that something was wrong. It wasn’t a realization, but a fundamental truth. I saw tentacles. They’d been there before, but also hadn’t. They slithered through the building, going back and forth and were part of the walls and also not. I saw a terrible haunting creature, one I’d seen before but couldn’t put anywhere. Then I saw the face of a teenager. Then the faces of other people. It was a cacophony of imagines... or memories, but I couldn’t put them anywhere. Suddenly, fear and panic washed over me and I felt the desperate urge to do... something. I rushed on, turned here and there as I pushed past tentacles and faces, trying to figure out what was going on. Then I remembered Julie. She was here, and I had to find her.

A different voice reached me. It was strained, quiet, but for a moment it pushed everything else aside. I felt myself stop, and I felt my attention shifting towards it as it reverberated through my mind.

“Dylan, none of this is real. You’re in a dream. Something’s trying to influence you to break into your mind. You’ve got to wake up!”

I knew this voice. It was an important voice. Before I could remember who it was, however, it was gone. Something different and alien had pushed it aside.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I was back in the wasteland, yet this time, it was different. The sky ahead was moving and then torn apart. At first, I saw nothing but darkness, but then a twisted, torn world came into view. The ground was shifting and constantly moving. I saw upside down mountains that grew from the sky. I knew something was looming out there, but a thick, overwhelming darkness hid it. Then, for a mere moment, something came forward and rose from the darkness. I don’t know what I saw, but it was so tremendous it defied all reason.

I cringed back, but found myself at the riverside in my city.

The grass felt soft between my hands and the sun felt warm on my skin. I felt myself relaxing, leaned back and stared up at the beautiful blue sky.

“You awake, sleepyhead?” Julie asked.

“I fell asleep?”

“Sure did,” she said laughing and inched closer towards me.

I set up and looked over at her, at her long dark hair and her beautiful eyes. Yet, for a moment, something stabbed at me. When I winced, Julie’s eyes grew wide.

“Hey, you okay?” she asked.

I nodded. For a moment, my eyes turned from her to the city ahead. The riverside was beautiful.

“So, are you ready to take me to your place yet?”

“Wait, don’t you know-?” I started, but my voice trailed off.

This all felt strange, but my hazy mind couldn’t put things together. It was Julie’s face, her voice. For a second, a vision came up. I saw blood, a torn body, but it was gone before I could-

“You know, we’ve been together for so long, so why not? You know I love you,” Julie’s voice popped up again.

This wasn’t right. It was all wrong. Her way of speaking was different, her voice was different, and as I stared out at the city, I realized it was different, too. I couldn’t see it, but I felt it.

“No,” I mumbled and cringed back. “No! You’re not... not her!”

As I tried to push myself up, the grass had grown thicker, longer and was slithering around my body to keep me in place. The woman next to me was distorted, twisted, and changed into a hellish version of herself.

“You did this! You let me die!” she bellowed as her body turned into a fleshy mess.

The city behind her was being distorted as well. Derelict ruins replaced pristine buildings. The river that had been fresh and blue before was now thick with blood and gore. The sky was burning and filled with tentacles of insane proportions. I was stunned into silence, paralyzed, and a presence filled my mind. It didn’t speak. Instead, it filled my mind with emotions, with thoughts. What I was seeing here was the future, the future of my world.

Then the voice was pushed away, pushed aside, and so was the nightmarish vision of my city. Yet, a moment later, it was back and once more I felt it tearing through my mind. Finally, though, it was over and everything around me vanished.

I lay in bed, panting and shaking. As I pushed myself off the bed and to my feet, I found myself in the middle of our new apartment. Nearby, someone was lying on the floor, someone I knew. A moment later, a name appeared in my mind: Sandra. I rushed to her side.

“What’s going on? What’s happening?”

“You need to get in contact with Headquarters. There’s a signature here. You need to tell them the location. You need to-“

“Wait, what’s-?”

“There’s no time! Please, I beg you, tell them where we are! We need help!”

At that moment, something clicked. Sandra was a cold, hard bitch, a mentalist of all things. This was her? Was that her voice? Was that how she talked?

“I beg you!”

I realized it. None of this was real. This was not how she talked. As I looked around, I saw that the surrounding walls were entirely different. This was not the apartment.

“This is wrong!” I screamed as loud as I could.

With that, the illusion was shattered. It all melted away. The room, the floor, Sandra, all of it. My mind still felt heavy, but then a giant weight was lifted off it and pushed further and further away until it vanished.

I was in a meadow, surrounded by grass and trees.

“Dylan,” I heard a voice.

When I turned around, I saw a distant figure. This time, my mind was clear, and this time I recognized the voice instantly.

“Julie, is that you?” I mumbled as I took a step towards her.

“Dylan, thank you for trying,” she whispered, but her voice was clear and loud in my head.

“Julie, what are you?” I asked as I started in her direction.

“Don’t come. You can’t. Stay there. I just wanted to tell you it’s not your fault. None of this.”

I just stood there, stunned, and stared at her. I so desperately wanted to get to her, but at that moment, the vision vanished. It was replaced by a cramped room. Tears were streaming from my eyes and when I looked up, I saw a figure standing over me.

Sandra.

“You did well. It’s gone now. Its influence has left you and the connection is cut. You’re not in danger anymore. You can rest now.”

With that, she turned away to leave the room. The tears were still streaming hot from my eyes as I stared after her. I watched as she left the room and gently closed the door behind her. The words “thank you” were still trapped in my dry throat and I’d not been able to bring them out before she was gone. I knew what she’d done and what she’d try to do for me. All I could do was to weep because there’s one thing I realized now that I was awake. It hadn’t been Julie’s voice that had spoken to me. How could I’ve recognized her voice if I couldn’t even remember it anymore?

Fuck monsters and fuck all of this.